It was time for him. He was never going to be a Metzen, and there really wasn't anyplace else for him to go (except out), it was clear it was draining on him. 6 years is a long time for a gig like that.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Stupid people, obviously, who can't understand how GC's approach was the best WoW ever had so far.

Speaking of something else, I wonder what sort of "opportunity" he had, considering his place in the Blizz team was already a very high ranked and stable position.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

I never quite understood the hatred some paladins have towards Kaplan, after all I only started to give a fuck about blue posts in BC, perhaps someone would care to explain to me what he had done because apparently he was the fucking prick we had to blame for all we endured until Wrath.

I don't believe there is chance he found a better position for a better company than Blizzard, unless someone offered him an absurd amount of money that Blizzard just wouldn't match. I suspect that he's gonna move away from video game design and pursue some other career opportunity, who knows what.

All in all, I feel he was doing a great job with WoW, people who are saying 'good riddance' and stuff just have no fucking idea how hard it is to make a game as balanced as WoW is right now. Sure, it's not flawless, but it's pretty damn good.

Io.Draco wrote:I never quite understood the hatred some paladins have towards Kaplan, after all I only started to give a fuck about blue posts in BC, perhaps someone would care to explain to me what he had done because apparently he was the fucking prick we had to blame for all we endured until Wrath.

Kaplan started as Tigole in Everquest, so did Alex Afrasiabi and Rob Pardo. They were hired because they ran this huge guild there.

At one point, Kaplan actually caused an EQ server crash because he was not happy that paladins could tank as well as warriors in that game.

For all of Vanilla and most of BC, the design philosophy was that Hybrids were penalized for being hybrids (you know, hybrid tax?)

Paladins and Druids were designed faulty off the bat because of those preconceived ideas, even tho they were supposed to fill several rolls.

There was also a sort of feedback loop between one of the top warrior tanks (possibly top worlwide), Kungen, back in the day, making assertions about Prot Warriors should be the only tanks in the game.

So you had the top tank trying to keep the other classes down, and the lead designer that had an inherent bias against hybrids and other classes that could tank other than warriors and you have a recipe for disaster.

Ghostcrawler moved WoW away from the idea that a class could only do one thing, and that certain things could only be done by one class. That concept was horrible in a game where it takes several days to make a new character.

For that, and probably several other things, wow players should be eternally grateful to him.